Violence and Its Pervasiveness

Violence and its pervasiveness is a central theme in Roberto Bolaño's 2666, manifesting across various periods and locations throughout the novel. This theme is not confined to a single part of the book but weaves through all five sections, creating a tapestry of brutality that spans the 20th century and beyond.

The most explicit and concentrated exploration of violence occurs in The Part About the Crimes, which focuses on the femicides in Santa Teresa, a fictional stand-in for Ciudad Juárez. Here, Bolaño presents a relentless catalog of murdered women, describing their deaths and the discovery of their bodies in clinical detail. This section forces readers to confront the horrifying scale of the violence against women in the city. The sheer number of victims and the matter-of-fact tone used to describe their fates create a sense of numbing horror, reflecting how such...